When I first started out in self-help and personal-empowerment years ago, I was looking for that illusive secret, tip, or trick that would help me learn how to be a happier person. I thought if I could just fix me, or be better, or figure IT out, then I would create landslides of love, peace and happiness, all the time.

Of course that was immaturity, and spiritual ego, and just plain ole’ wrong. In part, my message and platform is in response to the positive psychology and “choose happines” movement I was sucked into for years, and to be honest, I feel did more detriment to a generation of seekers than their actual misery ever could have.

Now, looking back, I can see it was all extremely short sighted, born out of one man’s own angst, and for profit in an industry that thrives on catering to our discomfort, pains and insecurities.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some principles we can learn, which help us to not be so in resistance to life; that will absolutely give us more freedom, more choices, and as a result allow for the natural ebb and flow of the emotion of happiness to move through us more regularly

Here are some of the principles I implement. Remember, I’m not chasing happiness as an end. I don’t even try to find it. I just allow these principles to guide and serve me in my life, and then happiness, well she always finds her way back to me.

The hardest person to forgive is usually yourself.Resentments show up for a reason. That person or problem you are having a hard time letting go of, is probably an invitation to retrace your steps and find out where you self-abandoned, ignored your intuition or didn’t stand for your own worth. When you can forgive yourself, you have access to your power and can make new choices in the future.

You will always have an inner five year and old. He/She needs compassion and loving awareness, not to be told she’s “not real” or rationalized away through asking “is this true?” All aspects of who we are “are real” – they just aren’t the only thing that is real. When we see our tender and shadow-self with compassion and reverence, she has less control and she’s less likely to unconsciously react, chase and manipulate. Most often she’s just waiting for YOU to finally show up for YOU.

Acceptance is different than tolerance. Acceptance is clearly seeing a situation without the projections, distortions, fantasies, and triggers that normally distort the clearest picture. Acceptance doesn’t mean you have to put up with it or tolerate it. You can discern, “more of the same? or “do I wish to create something different?” You often can’t change who is doing what, but you can make more empowered choices. And remember, choosing to not make a choice, is still a choice.

Learn how to grieve.Grief is miraculously cleansing. It’s like a detox for the soul. I had no idea how to do this for a long time. I thought negative emotions would bring more negativity into my life, so I bypassed a lot of healing opportunities. This created stuck, stored grief material and unhealed debris that festered. Our souls will keep recreating opportunities in our lives to heal and create new patterns until we FINALLY lean into the underlying core wound or core belief. Acknowledge grief, sadness, loss, and anger. They just want your attention, and sooner or later they will get it.

Learn what’s yours and what isn’t yours. If you are an empath, intuitive, creative, or emotionally and energetically sensitive, it’s easy to be a sponge and take on the world’s hurts and pains as if they are our own. But it is essential, if we want to do good in the world, to know where our boundaries start and stop; to Know what we have power over; to Know what we are responsible for and to Know that our worth is not tied into healing and fixing everyone we meet.

Be equally as grateful for what you don’t have as for what you do have. Sometimes what isn’t in our life is just as important as what is in our life. The voids in our life are preparing us; asking us to go deeper; showing us how far we’ve come. Spaciousness is always an opportunity for massive doses of self-love and gratitude. Ask for guidance if you are unsure: “Please show me what I most need to see now. I am grateful. I am open.” The in-between is actually your cosmic usher asking you to take a breath and enjoy the ride.

Learn to work with the contractions and expansions in your life. We get addicted to doing, creating, achieving and closing deals. Expansion feels good. It’s our soul discovering new territory, showing us the higher potentiality in our lives. But if we don’t learn how to settle into the energy of stillness, renewal, and retreat equally as much, we will miss the opportunities for healing and deeper levels of truth to be shown to us. Tell the taskmaster in you to “shut up and sit down we’re taking a breather!”

Know your core values. A lot of internal angst and shame come from thinking we should be doing something the way someone else is doing it. Life is so much more enjoyable and easy when the goals we make are in alignment with our own heart and soul. I will never be a domestic goddess or a world traveler, so I don’t put pressure on myself to have house beautiful or fill up my passport with exotic stamps from foreign countries. But I do love learning new things, writing, and taking care of my health so I schedule these things in and budget for them without guilt.

Be honest, ruthlessly authentic, and say what you mean to say. Have enough self-awareness to know your own motive and be clear about it. Say what you’re scared to say. “I really want you back in my life.” “I want to explore what’s possible with you.” “I don’t feel this is aligned with my heart and soul.” “I really love you, but I don’t want to be with you.” Whatever it is that feels vulnerable, silly or “too much authenticity” for someone, is usually the very thing you need to say or admit to set yourself free. Speaking from our deepest truths opens up the exact dialogue to move forward. It’s better to be honest and clear and know, than to live in the inertia and smallness of not being fully expressed.

When in doubt, just ask! Everyone I know understands I don’t make assumptions. If I want something, I ask. If I feel something, I WILL lovingly tell you. The guarantee on my end is I am always compassionate. I see a lot of people make the mistake of jumping to conclusions or trying to decipher what someone means. Being vague and playing games are for people who don’t know who they are and manipulators. You deserve to know the truth. And if someone gets weird or uncomfortable, then they aren’t able to have the same kind of honest conversations as you are.

See, hear and talk to everyone as if they are powerful and beautiful. Everyone we meet will be in different stages of their own evolution. If we can hear them as their most powerful, creative selves who just want love and connection the same way we do, we literally will feel more love, because when we participate in love purely, we feel Love more profoundly through that demonstration. When we see people as just their limitations, it actually keeps both us and them small because there is a separation that doesn’t allow for the transfer of love.

Your body is sacred. Let me repeat. Your body, your heart, your love, your sexuality are all sacred. For too long I didn’t value that my heart, body, and sexuality were connected. I don’t apologize for this anymore. I don’t need to use my body as an object to get approval, attention or love. Don’t get me wrong, I love my feminine power and my human desires. This energy, put to good, conscious, use is powerfully creative, loving and expansive. But, unconsciously used as the source of our worth and value, it can be destructive to ourselves and others. Learn to discern who is ready and deserving of your divine worth.

Become your own Beloved.Fairy-tale romances are fun. But they’ve conditioned us to believe that there is a storybook prince or princess out there who will ease all our pain, complete us, and make life wonderful. When we discover how to be our own lover, partner, admirer, and supporter, we start to generate these feelings from within and begin to really Know ourselves. This creates space for the authentic YOU to show up without neediness, blindness, or grasping in relationships. This is the foundation for allowing your soul to resonate with other soul’s on your path; this is where unconditional Love meets her match and says “I love you because I am love” not because of what you can provide for me.

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Megyn Blanchard

Truth teller, Spiritual myth buster, Inner Relationship coach

My commitment is to be as human with you, as is humanly possible over the internet while I break down overly simplistic, reductive, self-help and spiritual teachings. Join me for monthly updates, stock my Instagram meanderings, and get access to the Wholehuman™ tribe, a soulful support tribe for real life healing, relationships, and self-love –– with a side of you’re a bad ass, we won’t let you forget it, and maybe some virtual booty dancing.

“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”~Pema Chodron

One of the spiritual principles I push back on is this idea that we are here to “learn lessons.”

Inherently implied in this concept is that there are mistakes if we don’t “get it,” or a right and a wrong way to do things. Also, an unconditionally loving force that gifts us free will and then says, “let’s see if these crazy humans can get it right?” That’s trickery, not unconditional love, and I don’t think so.

Lessons, right and wrong, figuring it all out, punishment — these are fear-based human constructs projected on to a force we can’t and don’t understand.

It also tends to take people out of presence, acceptance, and surrender, (what Pema is really talking about in this quote) and puts them further into their heads, over analyzing and stressing, thinking that there is ONE RIGHT way to do Life before they can move past go and collect 200 dollars.

Really, truly, and oh-so-beautifully simplistically, is that you can’t really screw anything up. But you DO get to choose how you want this experience to go. Like what feeling or energy do you want to create your life from? What would you like to call forth more of? What patterns would you like to grow past or let go of?

So from this perspective, you can either make choices that are in alignment with your heart, with your truth, and with what you desire for your life, or that aren’t.

Your job then is to put one foot in front of the other, relaxing into and/or speaking up for the most honest truth in your life now.

This can sometimes be allowing feelings of despair, and grief, and sadness, and leaning into their beautiful messages of compassion and releasing. It can sometimes mean profound periods of not knowing and confusion. It can sometimes be periods of destruction and rebuilding. It can sometimes mean sparks of creativity and inspiration.

Non-resistance, acceptance, presence, and surrender will allow more room for grace, joy, and love to reside in the background of Life’s theater. When we aren’t pushing our ego’s agenda, or denying the messiness of what is, or imagining ourselves to be failures, and/or playing small and hiding (mostly from ourselves), we can show up for our Wholehuman experience, making clear and heart-nourishing choices, which enhances our relationship from within –– which builds TRUST, trust with ourselves, and with the mysteries of life and how she gently and sometimes forcefully ushers us forward.

+ FREE access to the private #wholehuman Facebook group

with more personal stories, guidance, and coaching.

All my love! Thank you for being here!

I respect your privacy and sanity. Unsubscribe at any time. I promise, I will still love you.

Megyn Blanchard

Truth teller, Spiritual myth buster, Inner Relationship coach

My commitment is to be as human with you, as is humanly possible over the internet while I break down overly simplistic, reductive, self-help and spiritual teachings. Join me for monthly updates, stock my Instagram meanderings, and get access to the Wholehuman™ tribe, a soulful support tribe for real life healing, relationships, and self-love –– with a side of you’re a bad ass, we won’t let you forget it, and maybe some virtual booty dancing.

When Iris McAlpine asked me to do this podcast interview for her new podcast Pure Curiosity, I was onboard immediately. Iris and I have only met once, but we connected because of our similar backgrounds in the “positive psychology vortex,” and because she and I both agree self-love and personal transformation are more nuanced experiences then is often purported in the soundbites of the self-help world.

Listen in as Iris McAlpin and I compassionately offer up more complete understandings of what a healing journey often looks like. Tough topics like how to deal with grief and loss, why most women struggle with identifying their needs, using self-help as spiritual bypassing, and the pain of having so much love to give while having nowhere to “put it” just to name a few.

For anyone who has been “working on themselves,” or trying to have more meaningful human and life experiences — Iris and I will give you a loving dose of reality as well as some practical tools.

+ FREE access to the private #wholehuman Facebook group

with more personal stories, guidance, and coaching.

All my love! Thank you for being here!

I respect your privacy and sanity. Unsubscribe at any time. I promise, I will still love you.

Megyn Blanchard

Truth teller, Spiritual myth buster, Inner Relationship coach

My commitment is to be as human with you, as is humanly possible over the internet while I break down overly simplistic, reductive, self-help and spiritual teachings. Join me for monthly updates, stock my Instagram meanderings, and get access to the Wholehuman™ tribe, a soulful support tribe for real life healing, relationships, and self-love –– with a side of you’re a bad ass, we won’t let you forget it, and maybe some virtual booty dancing.

I have never met anyone who would “choose unhappy.” Most of the people I interact with are looking for inner peace, happiness, and general feelings of ease and trust, and most of these people are STEEPED in personal empowerment and self-help.

Perception is a choice.

And even then, a miracle of “perception shift” must address the underlying, conditional, and relational wounding which has people feeling “safe” or more “significant” within their victim stories and perceptions.

“Happiness is a choice” is one of those reductive, overly simplistic self-help-spiritual platitudes that I have seen people use to create a more “enlightened” sense of self; to spiritually bypass core discomfort, which essentially creates more of what we are trying to heal: the disconnect between our mind, body, heart, and spirit.

Yes it is true, some people will use their negative emotions as an excuse to live in that space of “victimhood” or “inaction” but most often I find when you help the “seeker” find out what they are really feeling, underneath their persistent thoughts and emotions, then teach them how they can acknowledge, feel, and heal these beliefs and STILL love themselves, happiness usually has space to naturally flow in and out of one’s life without all the grasping, chasing, denying, and “shoulding” and all over one’s self.

Please, let’s not create more shame in people’s lives by over simplifying the #wholehuman experience.

Megyn Blanchard

Truth teller, Spiritual myth buster, Inner Relationship coach

My commitment is to be as human with you as is humanly possible, over the internet as I breakdown overly simplistic, reductive, self-help, and empowerment teachings. Join me for monthly updates, stock my social meanderings, and come be a part of the most bad ass, non-new-agey, real-life, private Facebook group as I give weekly sermons on realtionships, self-love, and self-awareness. I believe in original goodness, the simplicity and clarity of truth, the liberation of personal respsonsibility, and the endless healing of love. I can’t wait to see you.

The idea that our thoughts are just something we don’t have to “believe” in order to alleviate suffering is one of those self-help axioms which have become so pervasive that no one dares to question it. It’s been espoused as a high-minded ideal by “thought leaders” for so long as an “enlightened” way of dealing with our humanity, that it is swallowed hook line and sinker by every first-time seeker taking sips of the proverbial self-help Koolaid.

Our thoughts are not THE PROBLEM, they are a symptom of an underlying disconnection with ourselves: an old trauma or wound or feeling we are trying to avoid.

The truth is, our thoughts, our minds, our egos, are an amazing survival and coping mechanism our humanity relies on for protection: to guarantee us safety, security, and love. True this can be dysfunctional, but only to the point that we don’t understand where our thoughts come from or what they are trying to show us.

We have between 50,0000 and 70,000 thoughts a day. Most of them you don’t even notice or believe.

For the sake of our discussion here, I am talking about the thoughts that have emotional juice, that hold you hostage, that repetitively show up in your life.

Notice, in all the thoughts that you’ve ever had, that you didn’t want to be having, that could be qualified as “limiting” or “negative,” you never once thought about having the disempowering thought first.

So who decided that thoughts were a purely rational or logical problem? That the simple decision to call a thought “not true”, “not real”, “just a story”, “limiting”, or “negative” would be so utterly profound that the whole layered, nuanced, and complex network of human conditioning, cellular memory, stored trauma, feelings, beliefs, and subconscious imprints would all rally behind the rational mind’s attempts to muscle our whole being into believing what we think we should feel or think or deeply believe?

Anyone who has spent years in the self-help world working on “mastering their mind,” or “reframing their thoughts” or “observing their ego” knows we might get short bouts of reprieve before we are caught up in an old loop or reactive trigger or disempowering mind-stream again. It also requires a massive amount of effort and energy.

The reason wrestling our “negative” thoughts into oblivion is so catchy and popular is twofold.

A simple shifting of thoughts serves the masculine dominated, control and predict, plug in A get B, quick fix paradigm that sees life through a linear lens: “Just do this, and viola! You get that.” And it is more comfortable than doing the honest, self-reflection and heavy lifting of emotional integration, where we have to address and sift through disowned shame, grief and fear, making “change your thoughts change your life” a sellable solution, readily heralded by people who are already disconnected from themselves, allowing them to remain comfortable through dissociating more, only now more “enlightened” dissociation.

Forget “mastering your mind”, it’s not possible anyway. The mind is a tool; a portal, and an access point into deeper healing, self-connection, and renewal.

Thoughts aren’t problems to be logically talked away. Ever met someone in therapy working on the same stuff for 10 years? The mind’s outpourings are a byproduct of the fracture between our mind, body, heart and soul. They are a result of the imprinting and belief systems that were set up in early childhood trauma.

We all have trauma, it’s how we internalize fear.

So we might as well make friends with our thoughts and egos and limiting beliefs and allow them to take us to our underlying, disowned, pain, shame, and fear. Perhaps get curious about the feelings they are directing us away from for our “survival,” but truly for what they can lead us to for deep, healing, integration and renewal.

This re-connection, through our humanity as opposed to dismissing it, allows us to reclaim our hearts and bring us back to life. It opens the door to self-love and self-compassion and helps us develop a new relationship with our basic vulnerability and openness. This starts to restore what has been lost through self-abandonment and spiritual bypassing. We get more authentic vulnerability, self-intimacy, and self-trust. We experience more profound feelings of warmth and caring for the pain in our lives.

As we stop denying, dismissing, and repressing parts of ourselves, we integrate what has been disowned and the thoughts naturally become more loving, peaceful, and creative without having to go to war with ourselves, or be under constant observation.

Real compassion can only arise out of being willing to feel pain. As long as we refuse to recognize our thoughts for what they are: an access point to the undigested, stored grief material of our psyche, we won’t be able to feel any real compassion for ourselves or for others.

Compassion literally means “suffering with” — being a friend and companion to the pain that’s involved in being human.

+ FREE access to the private #wholehuman Facebook group

with more personal stories, guidance, and coaching.

All my love! Thank you for being here!

I respect your privacy and sanity. Unsubscribe at any time. I promise, I will still love you.

Megyn Blanchard

Truth teller, Spiritual myth buster, Inner Relationship coach

My commitment is to be as human with you as is humanly possible over the internet while I breakdown overly simplistic, reductive, self-help, and empowerment teachings. Get exclusive love notes and private updates, stock my Instagram, and come be a part of the most bad ass, non-new-agey, real-life, private Facebook group as I give weekly sermons on relationships, self-love, and self-awareness.

When in relationship to life and as a result other human beings, your soul pulls you toward the maximum growth potential for expansion, love, and union — this is why romantic relationships are such catalysts for change and so intoxicating.

But until we’ve cultivated an intimate, integrated, whole relationship from within, we will (mostly unconsciously) create toxic relationships with people who can’t meet us and who don’t truly love us.

We will chase, pine for, and hold on too tightly to people and circumstances that show us where our self-love gaps are; we will be drawn to mirrors of the potential we’ve yet to discover within.

We will get instant gratification and falling-in-love-highs confused with genuine respect, admiration, and compatibility. We will “fall in love” with how people make us feel as opposed to liking someone in their totality, and then consciously discerning “Does this relationship make sense?” “Is this match truly nourishing?” I know, not the romantic fairytale we’ve all been brainwashed by.

In order to choose people from our wholeness as opposed to our wounds; in order to unconditionally love and see people clearly, without the obstruction of projections, fantasies, and expectations, we must deeply meet, see, and know ourselves. This is the foundation of all true intimacy.

Seeing ourselves is much more than working on mindset, or awareness of our “stories”, or “mastering our thoughts”, it’s an intimate channel with our vulnerabilities; it’s an open, honest, dialogue with our deepest, disowned, wounds, shadows, and soft spots, while practicing radical compassion, acceptance, and responsibility.

This means understanding the feelings and beliefs, which come from old conditioning, that hide underneath the thoughts and the emotions. It means not making ourselves “wrong” or “shifting perspective” or calling our experiences “not true” or “not real,” but an ability to sit with the discomfort of our raw, human, messiness while demonstrating a tenderness perhaps we’ve never experienced before.

This is not to say that choosing a relationship from our wounds is “bad” or “wrong,” but we will perpetually be dancing on the edge of communion with our soul. The purity of our spirit: love, peace, ease, trust, and expansion will always be just out of reach.

Whereas choosing from wholeness doesn’t imply there is no effort involved, or that we won’t feel hopeful, or get disappointed, or have our hearts broken, but the need to cling, chase, or grasp onto what has run its course, or was never a match in the first place falls away as we’ve become more deeply rooted from within.

Choose from wholeness, from the heart, from your wise-woman self and watch the miracles of love unfold.

If you find this concept confusing or aren’t sure if you are loving from your wounds; if you find yourself repeating the same toxic relationship dynamics, this is the work I do with women in private coaching and in the Wholehuman Tribe.

Megyn Blanchard

Truth teller, Spiritual myth buster, Inner Relationship coach

My commitment is to be as human with you as is humanly possible, over the internet while I breakdown overly simplistic, reductive, self-help, and empowerment teachings. Get exclusive love notes and for your eyes only updates, stock my Instagram, and come be a part of the most bad ass, non-new-agey, real-life, private Facebook group as I give weekly sermons on realtionships, self-love, and self-awareness.

with more personal stories, guidance, and coaching.

All my love! Thank you for being here!

HELLO BEAUTIFUL SOUL!

Hi I’m Megyn, Spiritual Myth Buster, Truth Teller and Inner Relationship Coach. I breakdown high level self-help and self-love to make it implementable in your everyday life. Stick around, read for a while, I want to blow your life wide open to love, trust, and the mysteries of Grace.